Imagery Network Fine Registration by Reference Point Cloud Data Based on the Tie Points and Planes

Sensors (Basel). 2021 Jan 5;21(1):317. doi: 10.3390/s21010317.

Abstract

Cameras and laser scanners are complementary tools for a 2D/3D information generation. Systematic and random errors cause the misalignment of the multi-sensor imagery and point cloud data. In this paper, a novel feature-based approach is proposed for imagery and point cloud fine registration. The tie points and its two neighbor pixels are matched in the overlap images, which are intersected in the object space to create the differential tie plane. A preprocessing is applied to the corresponding tie points and non-robust ones are removed. Initial coarse Exterior Orientation Parameters (EOPs), Interior Orientation Parameters (IOPs), and Additional Parameters (APs) are used to transform tie plane points to the object space. Then, the nearest points of the point cloud data to the transformed tie plane points are estimated. These estimated points are used to calculate Directional Vectors (DV) of the differential planes. As a constraint equation along with the collinearity equation, each object space tie point is forced to be located on the point cloud differential plane. Two different indoor and outdoor experimental data are used to assess the proposed approach. Achieved results show about 2.5 pixels errors on checkpoints. Such results demonstrated the robustness and practicality of the proposed approach.

Keywords: calibration; fine registration; laser scanner point cloud; mobile mapping systems; photogrammetric imagery.